Epilogue 2 Elijah
I never believed in peace.
Not really.
Peace was something people talked about in books or whispered about in therapy offices. A soft word for something that never lasted. Not in the world I came from. Not with the things I’ve done. But then she walked into my chaos—sharp, beautiful, bruised—and somehow, she stayed.
I still wait outside her therapist’s office every time. I don’t ask questions about what she says in there. I don’t need to. All I care about is that she walks out that door and into my arms, every single time. That she chooses me again. She chose me.
She still chooses me. And that changes everything.
There’s power in being chosen. And there's even more in knowing I’d burn the world to keep her safe.
Every time she steps out of that glass door after therapy, eyes searching the street until they land on me, I feel it again—that pull in my chest. Like gravity. Like fate. She walks straight into my arms, and I remember what it means to be needed. What it means to belong.
When she wraps her arms around me on the motorcycle, it’s like the world fades into silence.
There’s something about that moment—the feel of her chest pressed against my back, her thighs tight around me, her fingers sliding under my jacket, always needing that one last touch.
I feel her heart in sync with the engine, feel her trust in the way she leans into me, unafraid.
And I never take that for granted.
She doesn’t know what it does to me. Having her that close, on something that dangerous. Every ride feels like a ritual—her holding me, not just with her body, but with everything she is. She gives me her weight, her fear, her joy. Her life.
I’d ride across the whole damn country with her arms around me like that. Maybe one day I will.
And when she rests her cheek against my back, I swear—God help me—I could believe there’s no war left to fight. Just the two of us, in motion.
We’ve both got scars. Some are visible, some buried so deep they still bleed when touched. But she looks at mine and doesn’t flinch.
The night still gets to me sometimes. Flashbacks.
Fear. Guilt I’ll never quite shake. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and just watch her sleep.
One hand on my chest, like she’s making sure I’m still there, breathing steady, completely at ease.
It undoes me. Every time. I don’t think she knows what it does to me when she calls me Daddy in that sleepy little voice or how much restraint it takes not to worship every inch of her body every damn hour of the day.
But it's not just lust. It's never been just lust.
It’s the way she smiles when I cook for her. The way she laughs, full and unfiltered, like she finally believes she's safe. It’s the way she trusted me to become her home when everything else around her fell apart.
She says I make her feel safe. But she’s the one who brought me peace. She’s the one who gave my violence a purpose. My darkness, a direction.
So yeah, I might still be the man who could tear down the world. But now?
Now I only want to build her one.
And as long as she’s on the back of my bike, holding me like I’m the only thing that matters—I’ll never stop moving forward.
In a world that tried to break us, we built something unbreakable—us.
THE END.